Posts Tagged ‘Everquest II Extended’

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Right then, what’s left? Everquest 1, Ultima Online, World of Warcraft, Warhammer Online, Lineage… What else yet stands firm against the free to play tide? The latest to switch is SOE’s 2004-launched Everquest II, which will offer itself to the microtransaction gods next month.

It’s dabbled before with a F2P parallel client, with but as of the Age of Discovery expansion free-to-play will be active on every one of its servers. It’ll retain subscriptions and expansion packs for those who want to stick to the old ways, however. Full details on exactly how it all works are in this Massively post; apologies for not summarising here, but I’m still a zombie after power-playing Skyrim. Also, I want to go and play some more Skyrim.

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Everquest II Extended, the free-to-play parallel version of the MMO grandaddy’s only child, has shed its beta tag and opened its microtransaction-funded doors to all comers. Which means it’s a bit more spit’n’polished since the earlier version, plus you get a free flaming staff if you sign up before end of play on Sunday.

“An unmatched quality and quantity of content and adventure that no other free-to-play massively multiplayer online game can offer,” it claims, though I have no idea how you measure that kind of thing. DDO and LOTRO probably have quite a lot of content and adventure too, I’d imagine. I’ll have to get out my content-and-adventure-o-meter to know for sure, though.Read the rest of this entry »

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As previously reported, Everquest II is adding a Free-to-Play option. The story is no longer true. It’s gone into Open Beta, so now totally has a free-to-play option. The unique twist is that it doesn’t touch the traditional game at all, instead offering a parallel Everquest II Extended free-to-play option. So if you want to play a sub game you can, and if you want to enter a more micro-payment option, you can do that too. You can download the client here, which has Guild-War-esque streaming tech to allow you to start playing rather than waiting for Gigabytes of stuff to squeeze out of your internet-pipe. Also, according to the FAQ, despite being a Beta, there won’t be a character wipe when it goes live properly, so all your progress (and expenditures) will carry across into the full launch. This free-to-play second-life for 3rd-wave MMOs is very much a trend of the year, and you can see the Gamescom trailer below…Read the rest of this entry »

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With SOE having made some in-roads to freeland with Free Realms, it seems they’re also going to try it with Everquest 2. It’s not quite the DDO or LOTRO model, however, since Everquest II Extended is going to be an entirely separate (although mechanistically and thematically similar) game from the Everquest 2 that you probably abandoned to go back to World Of Warcraft. There are a bunch of details over here – it’s probably going into beta on 17th of August – but you won’t be surprised to learn that the game will be supported by sucking out vital elements of your soul and using them to feed the dead god Anubis, who lives on in a nth-dimension beneath the surface of the Earth an optional subscription and in-game micropaymentish marketplace.